Interview
F or the last two years, David Chancellor has been working alongside Saudi Arabia’s National Center for Wildlife (NCW), documenting the Kingdom’s rewilding of its existing ecosystems and re- establishment of its biodiversity. His passion for the region was ignited after spending over a month there on assignment in 2021. “While working with National Geographic, I was commissioned by the Saudi Green Initiative (SGI) to document the early stages of the Kingdom’s ambitious rewilding program,” David recalls. “By the end of that assignment, I had seen, first-hand, the huge potential of what could be achieved in this landscape, and wanted to understand more. “In many cases around the world, the eradication of wildlife is due to habitat destruction caused by overpopulation, and in some cases, hunting. This is also evident in Saudi Arabia; however, large areas of the Kingdom remain pristine. Therefore, the reintroduction of wildlife into these landscapes can be relatively straightforward, providing you engage with local communities. “Then there were species I had never realised once roamed Saudi Arabia – leopards, lions, cheetahs,” he adds. These apex predators, repeatedly depicted in ancient rock carvings found throughout the Kingdom, are now critically endangered or locally extinct. “Those petroglyphs have become a shining illustration for what used to be here, what is no longer here and what could be rewilded,” David notes. Desert ghosts “Lately, I’ve been working with sand cats, which are extraordinary mesopredators,” David continues. “They occupy a lower tier of
the food pyramid, but they remain essential prey for the species above them that we plan to reintroduce. “It’s been very difficult to photograph them,” he remarks. “These are largely nocturnal animals. They move over huge, barren desert landscapes, and they spend the daytime in burrows deserted by large lizards, so we were reliant on the scientific teams working at Prince Mohammed Bin Salman Royal Reserve (PMBSRR) who are collaring the cats to further understand their behaviour. Living in some of the country’s harshest environments, these shy, elusive animals are rarely spotted, let alone photographed. Once the team identified a burrow used by the cats, David would use low-resolution trail cameras to check if the animal had re-entered after a night’s hunting. “If we saw them go in, we could take the gamble and presume they were still in there and wouldn’t come out until sunset. That gave us an opportunity to set camera triggers with the GFX bodies outside the burrows,” David explains. “We could then watch from the mountains that surround the desert. When we saw the cats come out of the burrows, we’d use radio releases to fire the cameras. We didn’t want to use artificial light or flashes that might frighten the cats, so we had to use higher ISOs and lower shutter speeds. That meant the cameras needed to be very solidly mounted, and we had to be in a position to see when the cats were not moving so we’d know when to release the shutter.” The GFX System Larger imaging formats like the GFX System are more commonly associated with
David Chancellor
David Chancellor is a multi- award-winning documentary photographer whose work interrogates the complex relationship between humankind and the natural world. Website: davidchancellor.com Instagram: @chancellordavid
FUJIFILM Focus Magazine 11
September/October 2026
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